Presenting The Thinking Process Behind Your Photographs To Improve Your Photography

Us photographers know full well, “good enough” is never good enough.

You should always strive to make the most you can out of any idea.

Ideas aren’t something that you come by every day, but with enough practice, you’ll learn to develop them more and more until you achieve a complete product.

Image by David Mark

Photographs may often look pretty good from where you’re sitting, and although you’ll notice the areas in need of improvement, you might be inclined to let them slide and address the issues “next time.”

However, experience tells me, there is no next time. You should do it now.

You have to force yourself to make the most out of a photograph, even if it means redoing it 50 times.

I’ll provide you with two examples to show you how to improve your photographs.

1. Photographing Architecture

I was wandering around my hometown, which is undergoing a massive overhaul, and I saw this piece of new baroque architecture that I wanted to photograph. 

My immediate instinct was to capture this arch with the clouds in the background. It had nice contrast and color, so I took this shot.

First picture. It looks quite nice, but something was missing when I looked at it closely. Photo by Dzvonko Petrovski. All rights reserved.

The Problem

I then soon realized that it could be better.

Architectural photography is all about making the arches and every crease in the concrete pop, so I decided that I’d make a high-contrast picture.

But then it became clear that the clouds would have too much contrast and it would become a distraction. Hmmm, back to the drawing board on this one…

Second shot. Black and white. This had higher contrast, but still not enough for me. Photo by Dzvonko Petrovski. All rights reserved.

Problem Solved

In order to solve that problem, I decided to shoot ten photos at a longer exposure (I closed up the aperture to the max and fitted a CPL filter in order to trim out even more light).

So, ten shots with 2-second exposure each turned out to be 20 seconds of exposure.

The final image. This is something I like. Yes, the clouds could use some smoothing, but I’ll do it when I get an ND filter so I can do it in a single long exposure. Photo by Dzvonko Petrovski. All rights reserved.

2. Portrait

Portrait photography can often be deceptive, even to the photographer. It’s easy to believe the portraits came out great when in reality they were just average.

This is simply because most models (especially if their gender is opposite that of the photographer) can distract the photographer from noticing that the picture (final product) is missing key elements.

When I photograph models, I usually break everything down into stages, especially when the models are friends of mine. So in this case, I took some shots of my friend and tried to build upon it.

First image. This was the root of the idea. However, it was too plain to stand out. Photo by Dzvonko Petrovski. All rights reserved.

How Could I Improve This?

Without a doubt, it was a decent portrait, but it could be better.

It will improve as you add more elements to it. So after some make-up and some magic with the hair, the portrait is starting to improve and it is already more interesting and appealing.

At the same time, it is more flattering for the model.

After discussing it with the model, we agreed upon the basic makeup and look. This was the second stage of the idea development. Photo by Dzvonko Petrovski. All rights reserved.

To Further Improve…

What if I can do even better?

Well, I can always do better. So can you. Never stop thinking about improvements. They can always be done, and the more you dive into it, the better the results will be.

So, I decided to find a better spot to photograph the model so as to have better light and background.

Using just a reflector to fill in some light and a better background, the portrait is now complete. Of course, some portrait retouch (a process which is explained in depth here and here), and some post-production magic is necessary to make a truly great final product.

This was the final result. Light was set up properly and the background was dimmer and more homogenous. The final idea was to give the image a look that was sleek, classy, and a tad retro. Photo by Dzvonko Petrovski. Model: Monika Pavlovska. All rights reserved. 

Summary

Every idea can be built upon with the goal of realizing what more you can do to improve. You must push yourself to do better all the time. Be reasonable, of course.

You can’t dwell on a single idea for years, but you can spend more than 30 minutes to further develop that idea, right?

So, here are some great tips I have to offer you:

• Shoot more,
• Build upon an idea,
• Combine ideas, and
• Whatever you do, never stop saying that this photo is good enough because it is never good enough. It is either just a snapshot or a great photo. The amount of work and creativity you put in it will decide which one it is.

How To Improve Your Photographs – Top Takeaways

• Firstly, get into the mindset of knowing that even if you took a GREAT few shots in that last session, there are always some improvements to be made to your photos.
• Don’t be afraid to try and test, ask people’s opinions on your ideas and if they think it works or not – doesn’t have to be another photographer either.
• If you get stuck with where to begin, just take it right back to basics like: composition, light angle, general exposure, lines etc. Try not to over complicate to begin.

Further Resources

Further Learning

When looking to have optimal light – especially for portraits, sometimes you need to make the use of artificial light as a primary source.
This training will teach you the fundamentals of how to use a Speedlight to capture those professional-looking headshots, in super quick time!

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Photographer who loves challenging and experimental photography and is not afraid to share the knowledge about it.

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Let’s get one thing clear – you’re not going to learn how to shoot perfect portraits overnight. There are many things you need to learn first. When it comes to portrait-shooting, no factor is more important than lighting. Even if you’re planning a home portrait session, you can still make the most from various lighting setups to achieve great results.

Photo by Didier Lin

Off-camera flash is one of things you’ll need here. Here are 7 actionable tips to creating studio light setups right at home and help you capture classic portrait lighting, creating some truly beautiful pictures.

1. Controlling the light sources

First, consider the problem of lighting inside your room. If you think that opening the windows and turning on all lights is a good idea, try again. The more the better rule doesn’t apply here. If you have both natural and artificial lights on, you’ll be mixing light sources – and that will only make it harder for you to white balance the image. If both these light sources happen to hit your subject, expect trouble.  Make sure to control the light sources, and stick to just one of them.

2. 90-degree angle, high contrast light

All you need is minimal amount of equipment and you’ll be on your way to achieving fantastic results. But be careful – if you decide to use a single flash head, the angle might end up  being really unflattering for your subject. To put it simply, the strong light will emphasize the uneven skin texture and create stark shadows paired up with bright highlights.

What you need here is a diffuser. Without this smart piece of equipment, you can be sure that the light will result in high contrast and once you place it near the subject, create serious fall-off problems with light spread unevenly across the face. If you decide not to use a reflector here, you can be sure that shadows will be deep.

3. 45 degrees, low contrast light with a reflector

Add a diffuser shaped like an opaque umbrella, and you’ll create a light source that will provide you with a much lower contrast. You’ll have a big burst of soft flash that will help you  make your portrait more interesting to the eye.

If you’d like to reduce some of the visible shadows, just place a warm-colored reflector close to the face of your subject. You can also use an umbrella, partially obscuring it to achieve the effect of strips of light reaching your subject.

4. 45 degrees, high contrast light

This is an interesting combination, because it helps you  emphasize the characteristics of your subject. But you’ll be dealing with pockets of deep shadow too. This is where light positioning is important – if you place it a less acute angle, you can be sure that the light won’t focus on skin texture. At the same time, it might not be flattering to the subject. Without a reflector, only half of the face will be illuminated, with the other half remaining a mere silhouette.

5. 45 degrees, high contrast light with a reflector

This is a much nicer lighting setup. It will perfectly show the three-dimensional nature of your subject’s face without creating too high a contrast or deep shadows. You should use it together with a reflector. Choose one that is bright white or silver. This is how you can create a subtle difference between the sides of the face which are lit and reflected.

But the contrast won’t be too high here, just a slight drop in brightness that will help you to mimic the soft natural lighting. Your photos will have depth and the lighting source will prove more than flattering for your subject. If you’d like to achieve a bit deeper shadows, just pull the reflector a bit away from the subject. Try to position the reflector in different ways to achieve different lighting effects.

6. Diffused light with a reflector

This is again a very gentle kind of lighting setup where the source of light is softened. You can do it either with a diffuser or a reflector. A diffuser will give you an effect similar to daylight cloud cover. It will spread light from the small source into a larger area, reducing the intensity of your flash unit. This is why you might need to slide up the output of the flash head. Still, you can be sure that the final effect will be flattering to the subject. What about a reflector? It will bounce any stray light back onto the unlit side of your subject’s face, helping you capture it better.

7. Rim lighting placed behind the subject

If you’d like to place the focus on the outline perimeter or the shape of your subject’s head, this is the right technique to use. By putting the lighting set-up behind the subject, you can create a cool rim-light effect that will look just stunning and make your portrait really special. All you need is a small light source. Make sure that your flash unit isn’t set to a very high power. The only thing you need to watch out for is rendering the face as a mere silhouette. To avoid this kind of effect, open the aperture wide and, if necessary, place reflectors on either side of the subject to bounce the light back into the face.

These are some basic lighting techniques that will help you make beautiful portraits right at home. Most importantly, they provide you with a good foundation which you can easily use to begin your experimentation. This is the first step to finding your own style for portrait lighting set-ups.

About the author: Carol Williams works for Grapefruit – fruit suppliers from Florida. She combines her great passion for photography with her love for sharing her experience and insights.

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Personally, When It Comes To Choosing A Camera Bag I Look For 3 Things

In this camera bag buying guide we’re going to look at those things are:

1. Protection
2. Quality
3. Comfort

This is by no means a rant, but there’s an old popular saying that seems very apt to the photographic world:

“Buy Cheap, Buy Twice.”

Whilst the price of a decent DSLR or Mirrorless camera (along with lenses) is always going to be the big ticket purchase, often we try to scrimp and save on the peripherals. This is my opinion is a mistake.

Image by Sam Forson

What Are We Trying To Save Money On?

Well, memory cards are a prime example. Buying cheap often means buying fake and fakes will tend to fail at the most inopportune moment. Hence the need to buy twice.

There is one piece of kit though where buying cheap might not only lead to buying twice but also to spending a whole lot more. I am talking about camera bags.

Camera bags are a fundamental part of our camera kit and should be regarded as so. Today we are going to look at why spending $200 on a camera bag may well save you money.

1. Protection

Straight off, this is the big, obvious reason for spending good money on a quality bag. Yet many of us don’t.

Some of us spend $3000-4000 on intricate high-tech equipment then stuff it all in a $40 camera bag.

Does that make sense??

The primary reason some camera bags are more expensive than others are that they use high-quality components and materials to ensure your camera has the best protection.

This ranges from the obvious, like strong, reinforced outer shells and thick well-padded inner dividers to less obvious items such as the clips that attach the camera strap to the bag. If one of these fails whilst you are on location, you risk losing all your gear.

Waterproofing is another form of protection more often found on higher priced bags. You would be surprised how little protection from rain some cheaper bags will give you. Even a light drizzle can find it’s way inside the bag and of course onto your precious equipment.

Top Tip!

If you bag isn’t waterproof, at least grab yourself a good detachable waterproof cover.

You spend a lot of money on gear. Don’t scrimp on protection. By Ed Kwon

2. Quality

As well as protecting your equipment, a good quality bag will last a long time. A simple fact, right?

Think of the difference between a cheap pair of shoes and an expensive pair of shoes. The expensive shoes will still be keeping your feet warm and dry long after the cheap ones have become landfill. Perhaps this is over-simplistic, but you understand the principle.

As photographers, we take out camera bags to remote inhospitable locations and subject them to all sorts of punishment. The mere act of opening and closing the bag puts wear and tear on zips, the bags straps can fray and get caught too.

The more you spend on a bag, the higher quality the materials will be and the longer they will last. This encapsulates the buy cheap buy twice saying at the top. A cheap camera bag might last only a year or two.

Another factor that makes buying a good bag important is the extras they often provide. Things like tripod pouches and straps, rain covers and multiple dividers allowing you to deeply customize your bag’s layout, useful if you want to carry different loads to different shoots.

A quality bag could last your entire photographic career. If you do decide to upgrade, you will find its depreciation is significantly lower than cheaper bags giving you more cash to spend on your next quality bag.

Good camera bags will last many years of hard use. By hammercem

3. Comfort

Lastly, we come to an equally as important point, how comfortable your new camera bag is.

You are lugging several kilograms of high-tech equipment for many hours a day. Your bag most definitely needs to be comfortable!

Cheap bags save money by using cheap material and have less ability to adjust the weight distribution. A good quality bag will have soft padding in the shoulder strap – which after a long day, makes such a huge difference! Believe me.

If it is a backpack it may well have a cross strap allowing you to pull the two shoulder straps together over your chest, spreading weight distribution and improving comfort.

A good quality backpack-style bag will also have a well-padded waist band strap to pull it snugly into your body – this also massively improves weight distribution.

Although the materials will be stronger, they will often be lighter too. An important consideration if you are carrying heavy loads for several hours per day.

High-quality material will give more comfort throughout the day. By mattiaswinbladh

Summary

There might be elements of your photographic equipment where you can save money. But, camera bags really should not be one of them.

Whether photography is your livelihood or your pastime, investing $200 in a camera bag will not only help protect your valuable gear but also allow you to move from location to location in comfort.

Next time you are in the market for a new camera bag, try to invest as much as you can afford, the piece of mind you will get cannot be measured. Lastly, you’ve bought nice gear – whether new or second hand, and you want to protect it, no matter what…

Camera Bag Buying Guide – Top Takeaways

• The first point we touched on was protection and ensuring you’ve got your gear shielded from not only the weather but being lugged around – say if you’re traveling to a location.
• The details. Next came the quality. You can (often) always tell a high-quality camera bag from a cheaper one – look at the stitching, the padding, the finish, the straps and they’ll all show if the bag “feels” like it’s going to last.
• And lastly, comfort. If you’re planning on choosing a bag that’s not particularly comfortable to carry around (because it’s a “bargain”) my advice is quite simply, don’t buy it. If you’re gonna be miserable, it’s really not worth it and you could end up actually injuring yourself!?

Further Resources

Further Learning

Using Lightroom? Photoshop? Photoshop Elements?

Learn a ton of highly valuable pro post processing tips to make your time at the computer more enjoyable.
This amazing eBook guide will help you discover what you can do to make your photos shine!
“Learn The Fundamental Editing Steps From A Pro, That Will Change Your Photography Forever!”

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Jason Row is a British born travel photographer now living in Ukraine. His images have been licensed to companies such as Cunard, Ethiad and Virgin Atlantic as well as multiple newspapers and magazines. As well as shooting stills he is now creating travel stock video in 4K. He maintains a travel stock photography site at Jason Row Photography You can also catch up with him on Facebook at Facebook/TheOdessaFiles

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Please visit our main site for booking availability and rates.

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Here’s part 3 of our Black Friday tips series. Click here for part 1. And, click here for part 2.

Fundamental Editing isn’t about repairing a photograph- It’s about Polishing it.

(Tip from The Ultimate Guide to Fundamental Editing – 75% off today)

There is a big difference between repairing something and just polishing it up.

Polishing is about making what’s already there- look better.

This is one of the most common mistakes by photographers that do not understand fundamental editing… Sharpening up an image.

For this quick tip, we are going top give you the short answer. The long answer is located in the full guide.

Since, Adobe has included tools in Lightroom, Photoshop, and Elements that are labeled to “sharpen” an image file. It would be reasonable to assume that if you have taken an un-sharp picture, (such as the one above); these tools would help you put it back in focus. Right?

WRONG!

In order to “pull” that image back into focus, the sharpening tools must be maxed out. This might look fine to you, when viewed on your screen. However, you are potentially creating even bigger problems!

Over-sharpening creates artifacts that are quite visible to a trained eye, or when printed into a photographic print, or when viewed large on a computer screen (even an untrained eye can recognize the problems at that point).

These artifacts often appear as discolored lines along areas of differing contrast (the blue arrow). Over-sharpening will also create an artifact that looks like a “mottled tone” (the red circle).

Quick Tip-

1. Get it sharp when you take the photograph.
2. Don’t attempt to pull a blurry picture back into focus in post-production.
3. Learn how to subtly sharpen an image in post-production, so that it looks natural, sharp as a tack, and without artifacts.

If you’d like to learn more about sharpening an image and the other fundamental edits– Click here now to check out The Ultimate Guide to Fundamental Editing (75% off today)

Take This Quiz on B&W Photography

(Tip from the Better Black and White Guide – 76% off today)

I’m going to ask you 3 questions taken directly from our premium guide, “Better Black and White”

I’m also going to give you the answer to those questions.

Let’s see how you do-

1. If a black and white photograph is too high in contrast- what happens to the image?
2. Name a simple method to determine if a scene will look good in black & white.
3. The Zone System helps you determine what when taking your picture?
   

(Stare into the goat’s eyes as you determine your answers…)

Question One- If you convert your color image file into a black and white photograph, and you set your contrast levels too high, you will lose valuable detail in the highlight and shadow areas.

Question Two- View your intended scene through a monochrome filter. The filter removes color and forces you to see the scene in shades of tone only.

Question Three- The Zone System was a valuable part of determining exposure back in the film days. In the digital world, it has less use in camera. However, it is INVALUABLE when it comes to converting your color image files into black and white photographs during post-production. It is one of two key tools that are provided in editing software to help you get a perfect black and white conversion!

If you are interested in producing your own dynamic and share-worthy B&W images, without spending money on fancy plugins or presets– Go here to check out our Better Black and White Guide now » (76% off today)

What the Heck Just Happened to My Histogram!

(Tip from the Complete Landscape Photography Guide – 66% off today)

The “Histogram” can be a mysterious little fella.

A photographer can be going about his or her business… editing a photograph… and all of a sudden the Histogram goes “BAZZINGA” and implodes.

Today, the Quick Tip is going to explain one example of a destructed Histogram, so that you can recognize it in your own work and thus avoid it.

Have you seen this before in your landscape photography?

Photograph by Charlie Stinchcomb

As you make your adjustments, you begin to see cracks forming in the Histogram. This is not good. Those cracks are tonal values that are being lost.

Think of the Histogram as a rubber band. When you stretch a rubber band, it begins to show where the weakness in the material is located. If you stretch it far enough, those weak points will break.

The Histogram works the same way. If you stretch it too far, it will break at the weak points, and you will have drops in tonal value.

Key Lesson: Be conscious of these breaks. There will be times when you can’t avoid creating some of them. However, if you are constantly having to form breaks in your Histogram during post-processing adjustments, you are not exposing your landscape images properly in camera; study up on your metering and exposure techniques.

If you want to learn exactly how to create professional level landscape photographs today– Go here to check out our Complete Landscape Photography Guide now » (66% off today)

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Ritesh Saini

Ritesh has been photographing for about six years now and his photographic interests have varied from nature and landscapes to street photography. You can see his photography on Flickr or on his website.

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Sourced by Time Trap Photography sharing the best photography tips, news and tricks throughout the industry. Time Trap Photography is dedicated to freezing those special moments in life that can be revisited and admired for generations to come. - Shannon Bourque
Please visit our main site for booking availability and rates.

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